Tough choices and taking chances, Katie Levick relishes Durham debut

When Durham won the right to field a team in the top tier of women's domestic cricket, the worlds of every Northern Diamonds squad member changed in a moment.

Yorkshire, which fed heavily into that now-defunct outfit, had been overlooked and instead placed in Tier 2 of the new county-based structure for 2025, albeit only for a year now with their inclusion in Tier 1 subsequently brought forward to 2026. It left a number of players facing a tough choice - relocate to play at the highest level or mark time at home in the lower ranks.

One of those players was Katie Levick, the Yorkshire born-and-bred legspinner who has consistently been one of the nation's leading bowlers outside of the England set-up over the past five years. She believes it is testament to the closeness of that Diamonds group that her decision to accept Durham's offer of a three-year contract was met only with encouragement from her former team-mates.

"The way everything played out last year we probably sort of trauma-bonded, that group of Diamonds girls," Levick told ESPNcricinfo on the eve of Durham's first game, against Essex in the Metro Bank One-Day Cup. "It was a tough time for all of us to try and make a decision.

"One of the worst things for that particular team is that we were such an incredibly close-knit squad. We were genuinely a group of 15 friends that hung out together outside of cricket and just loved playing their cricket together. Unfortunately, the decision came, as it did, and we all chose different paths.

"But that's also professional sport, so we were all really supportive of each other, and we wanted to make sure we all made the right choices for ourselves, individually, and whether that was moving on to a new team, or if it was staying with Yorkshire, there was no bad blood and there was no malice anywhere."

Levick has form when it comes to making difficult decisions. Barely into her 20s and having spent a year training with the England Academy, she chose to pursue a career off the field after finishing university, with central contracts still two years off being introduced. When domestic women's cricket was restructured and a handful of professional contracts dished out in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, Levick was again faced with a choice between a full-time job on a now-established career path and an uncertain future with a just-convened regional team, Northern Diamonds, in a new competition.

Over the next five years of the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy, Levick was consistently among the leading wicket-takers and finished in the top five during three of four seasons in the Charlotte Edwards Cup. She was also the fourth-highest wicket-taker in the Women's Hundred in 2023 and ninth last year, with Birmingham Phoenix.

The Hundred is set to receive an injection of funds under private ownership from next year and it is expected that both women's domestic competitions will also benefit financially by aligning with the counties and their mens' white-ball competitions as women's versions of the Metro Bank One-Day Cup and Vitality Blast.

Durham have doubled down on the one-club ethos, sending their women's squad on a pre-season tour of Zimbabwe with the men, who have made the trip a number of times in recent years.

All these changes have allowed Levick's cricket career to continue evolving to the point where now, with her 34th birthday approaching in July, she is keen to keep playing "as long as my body allows".

"I'm just thrilled that I clung on long enough to be a part of it, and hope I can still keep going for a few more years."Katie Levick

"Ultimately, I wanted to play Tier 1 cricket, and so that was the decision I had to go with," Levick said. "And Durham was just a really interesting prospect. To still be wanted at 33 and to be seen as an integral part of a team was a big draw for me, and also to be able to make history. We're the first professional women's team that's going to operate out of Durham, and to be able to still make history at this later stage of my career, that was something that enticed me."

Levick isn't the only Durham player to make a significant life move to play in the top flight. Mady Villiers has travelled from the former Sunrisers team which folded when its main components, Essex and Middlesex, split into Tier 1 and Tier 2 respectively. Villiers, whose England career looked set to take off after England played West Indies in their only series of the Covid-hit home summer of 2020, has linked up with the Durham squad after touring Australia with England A alongside former Northern Diamonds players Bess Heath and Hollie Armitage, their Yorkshire-born captain.

"I'm just thrilled that I clung on long enough to be a part of it, and hope I can still keep going for a few more years," Levick said. "The ultimate goal for anyone playing any sport is to represent your country, and to have to make a decision about that or getting a job and joining the real world, I'm so glad that girls don't have to do that anymore.

"Even if the ultimate end goal of international cricket isn't what you reach, it's still an amazing, fulfilling career you can have at domestic level, there's so much franchise cricket around the world. There's a platform and an opportunity to still show that, do you know what, I can play at this level and I am good enough, and that's something that I still relish from this.

"You'd be lying if you said you never had a 'what if?' But I think it was the right choice at that time in my career. Even looking now at the set-up, I'm so pleased I got to have the career I did. I think my career path, the way it's gone, has actually probably just been the story that it was always supposed to be for me.

"Obviously, I wouldn't say no if an England cap suddenly fell at my door, but this has been enough for me that I've been able to show, or I hope I've been able to show with my stats, that I could have probably mixed it at that level if things had been slightly different."